The 2013 conference of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Control (­UNFCCC) will be held on November 11 in Warsaw, Poland. Already four NGOs from Taiwan—the Industrial Technology Research Institute, the Environmental Quality Protection Foundation, the Delta Electronics Foundation, and the Taiwan Institute for Sustainable Energy—have obtained observer status under the UNFCCC.

In order to strengthen the understanding NGOs have of the UNFCCC, at the end of August the ROC Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited a number of domestic and foreign experts to hold a forum and provide concrete suggestions. These experts included Marilyn Averill, chairman of the Steering Committee for Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organizations (RINGOs) Constituency to the UNFCCC, and Gotelind Alber, focal point of the Women and Gender Constituency.

On August 28 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted a forum on NGOs and the UNFCCC, inviting specialists from home and abroad to provide ­expert advice and bring local environmental NGOs up to speed with the international community.

The UNFCCC took effect in 1994, and currently has 195 signatories. The spirit of the convention is to bring countries together to reach consensus on action to reduce the output of greenhouse gases and ameliorate the human causes of climate change. In 1997, countries negotiated the Kyoto Protocol, linked to the UNFCCC, which clearly defined binding reduction targets for six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide. In 2012, at the 18th conference of the parties to the UNFCCC in Doha, it was decided to extend the Kyoto time limit to 2020 and, before that deadline, to negotiate a new treaty that would bring major producers of greenhouse gases—including the US, mainland China, and India—under the rules.

UN expert Gote­lind Alber noted at the forum that international politics involves state-to-state dialog, but from the UN’s point of view, the real conditions in each country are like a black box. If information is not adequately transparent, then the UN is hard pressed to make any practical suggestions. This is where NGOs come in: Local NGOs can, from a non-governmental perspective, help member countries better mutually share information. Also, because NGOs are relatively closer to ordinary citizens, they can be even more influential in helping citizens recognize the importance of climate change.

Delta Electronics Foundation deputy executive director Wim Chang, who has been deeply involved in reconstruction work in Kaohsiung since Typhoon Morakot of 2009, said at the forum that their role has been, through the establishment of a long-term presence right in the locality, to understand the needs of local residents, and provide services that meet those local needs.

He pointed to the reconstructed campus of Min­quan Primary School in Na­ma­sia, a village badly damaged by Typhoon Mo­ra­kot, as an example. For local residents who may take refuge there during future extreme weather events, features of the school buildings’ design such as photovoltaic panels, flood- and earthquake-resistant construction, and the buildings’ exterior appearance, merely represent the basic “hardware”; but the big stairwells that can serve as gathering places where people can socialize and cope with the stress of waiting for help, and the broad hallways that will allow people living in the classrooms to preserve at least some privacy, are the features that really show the greatest concern for their wellbeing.

Representatives from the European Economic and Trade Office, the American Institute in Taiwan, and the German Institute in Taipei also attended the forum, and they praised the achievements being made on the non-governmental level in Taiwan in terms of green energy generation, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, recycling of electronics products, and greening of industrial processes (reducing energy use and pollution). They said that other countries could learn much from the examples being set here.

“Taiwan does things that the US has not been able to do,” said Marilyn Averill. The close interaction between government and NGOs in Taiwan is extremely rare. She was also impressed that the government was willing to lead the way in making a public commitment to saving energy and reducing carbon emissions.

Climate change makes no distinction between countries, between rich and poor, or between racial or ethnic groups. As residents of this globe, everyone in Taiwan from government to private citizens must take this vital issue seriously, and do whatever they can for the environment that we all live in.